Life Update
It's been over a year since we moved to Taiwan; we take a minute to reflect. Plus, an urgent call for help for an Afghan family & book club details
Hello dear readers!
Albert here. Apologies for being out of touch. It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks—okay, months. After what seemed like an interminable scorching summer, fall has come to Taipei and you can actually walk around without melting into a puddle. Of course, our grand plans to attend an outdoor arts festival last weekend were foiled by torrential rains. Maybe it’s climate change or maybe my memory is fooling me, but I don’t remember spending quite so much time inside when I grew up here.
We were disappointed to miss the festival, because we went last year and had a wonderful time. But we were also taken aback to be reminded that it’s been a year since we moved to Taiwan. Time flies, as they say.
How is it? people keep asking us, with expectant looks on their faces. Whenever Michelle and I hear the question, we share a look and chuckle bitterly: we don’t know what to say. There’s too much to say. We’ve spent the whole year navigating a series of transitions, and transitions—even self-imposed ones—can be hard. Personally, I’ve felt all year as though I was treading water, with little room to breathe and reflect. The past few weeks have been more disorienting than ever: we moved to a new apartment, baby P. switched schools, and we’ve had to learn a new routine as a unit.
My sense of dislocation has been heightened by my mother’s deteriorating health, which, as I mentioned in a previous post, was a large part of my motivation to come back. We thought we could help by being here, but since we’ve returned her condition has actually worsened. (The plus side is that we’ve found a physiological cause for her previous issues, but the prognosis is grim.) She’s had a Job-like several years, and this past year, which saw her in and out of hospitals constantly, was really the worst.
Nothing prepares you for the reality of an aging parent. Nor does anything prepare you for those unexpected moments when you find yourself unmoored by memories. Pangs of heartache have struck me at the most unexpected times—strolling through a flower market I once visited with her, or eating a gelatinous riceball that reminded me of the stand she used to take me to every weekend, or walking the halls of my old high school, halls I know every inch of, where she taught for more than twenty years. Even though I’ve come home, it doesn’t feel at all like a homecoming.
On the other hand, nothing prepares you for the growing admiration and appreciation that come from seeing your parent rise to a challenge. My father—once known by his friends as a gourmand (老饕) because he knew all the best restaurants in Taipei and ate out almost daily—has become an excellent chef, cheerfully cooking three meals a day, not only for my mother but sometimes for the three of us as well. He’s kept on top of my mother’s care while continuing to work a full-time job and play tennis three times a week. I’ve always been lucky to have nothing but respect for my father, but my admiration has grown over this past year. Even if his strength has exacerbated my feelings of uselessness.
Time flies, but it’s also a flat circle. Michelle has started teaching again; her law class for masters students at National Taiwan University has over thirty students. While she may say otherwise, Michelle is most herself when she’s in the classroom regularly, and this course seems to have given her new life. My “semester” has gotten quite busy too, as events and talks at our Institute accelerate in October and November. I’ve heard some incredible lectures. One memorable talk, a remarkable blend of social and cultural history, detailed the manifold pressures that confronted Ming dynasty test-takers sitting for the Civil Service Examination. (Turns out intense test-taking situations lead to rampant alcoholism! I’m glad I didn’t know that when I took the driving exam.) Another talk taught me about the differing and evolving interpretations British doctors and medical missionaries in the late nineteenth century had about “Shanghai fever.” The past year I’ve met some wonderful people, who have sparked new ideas and encouraged me to push my work forward. And I feel fortunate to be engaged in several new projects, on which I hope to share more with you soon. Intellectually, at least, I feel lucky to have found this new community. Amid all these transitions and heartaches, the rhythm and challenges of academic life have continued to anchor me.
Michelle’s life update
This year has been hard. Almost as soon as we landed in Taiwan, we became entangled with unspeakably difficult issues involving the health of our loved ones. I hope someday we can share the painful specifics, but for now they’re not ours to tell. I’ll say only that Albert and his father are real saints, and my heart is full of admiration for them.
This past spring, my parents came to stay with us for three months. (When I told them my friends thought that was a long time, my dad got indignant: “Which friend? Rachel? Jen?”) I had pictured their visit differently from the way it unfolded: I thought they’d share tender memories of banyan trees and obscure Taiwanese dishes, thought they’d show me where they went to grade school. All of that did happen, but we also fought. Our politics about Taiwan are different—for that reason I don’t show them this newsletter—and my guess is they were also working through unspoken layers of their past. My way of dealing with all of this, according to Albert, is to retreat into a shell. (He describes me as a possum playing dead to avoid being attacked, and he’s not wrong.) They’ll be back soon for another three-month stint. I know it’s mostly for their granddaughter, whom they adore, and who adores her Ah-ma and Ah-gong, so I’ll try to look a little more alive this time around.
It seems perfectly obvious in retrospect that coming to Taiwan—a place where our families have connections, roots, opinions—would mean experiencing new forms of loss of personal freedom. (By contrast, France was a charming neutral ground to bring family; together we could sit outside watching people go by, judging a former empire while sipping its wine.) But just because it’s a loss doesn’t mean it’s bad. We chose it. It also means intimacy, friction, new kinds of self-knowledge. It means the excitement of discovering an ongoing project of political liberation. I’m the closest I’ve ever been to seeing this country through Albert’s eyes, and that’s been wonderful. Taiwan is the freest space in Asia, among the freest in the world. When I meet people here from countries ranging from Hong Kong to Ukraine, Thailand to Algeria, I am struck by how Taiwan’s urgent and precarious project of national sovereignty reflects back the longings people have for freedom.
If you asked me where I feel most at home in Taiwan, it would undoubtedly be the local NGO spaces, where I’m more conspicuously foreign. Communication is harder; there’s less English spoken, and my crappy Mandarin is on full display. But the passion of the people I encounter there feels familiar even as it accentuates my feelings of uselessness. Their work on issues ranging from wrongful conviction to the death penalty is admirable, and it’s harder than what I did in the states because it gets so much less social recognition. I see myself in these people, and vice versa. They’d never leave Taiwan, just as I once thought I’d never leave the U.S.
Someday perhaps my Mandarin will be good enough to read an opinion by a judge or follow an entire court hearing, such as the ones I’ve been attending when I tag along with the Taiwan Innocence Project. In between hearings recently, someone introduced herself to me as a law student and intern. “What do you do?” she asked. “In America I was a lawyer,” I said. “Here I’m nothing.” She laughed; my self-deprecation is the most Taiwanese thing about me. You can disparage yourself all day long and nobody will call the suicide hotline. This year has been a process of accepting that it’s okay to be a bit of nothing—to be an observer, not the leader of any effort; to marvel at others and try to learn from them.
There’s so much more to say about the past year; but that’s all for now. Thanks, as always, for reading, for being there, and for being part of this community.
Urgent call for help for an Afghan family
We share a moving message and call for help from reader-friends Aaron Peck and Eng Sengsavang. Eng is raising money for an Afghan refugee family. Aaron writes:
For the past year, Eng, the reference archivist at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has been helping an Afghan family with two young daughters try to find a place to restart their lives.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan at the end of August last year, the father, an Afghan archivist, who for ethnic, religious and professional reasons feared reprisal by the Talbian, contacted Eng directly through her UNESCO email account. Prior to that, they had only been in touch once during a webinar. In October, after a series of harrowing plot turns, Eng helped them find a way out of Kabul (where they had been living in hiding since August). The problem is, the country they are currently in — which, for safety reasons, I'm not naming — does not grant refugee status, which means they are now stuck there. At the same time, that country also continues to threaten to close down the facility the family is currently in.
For the past year, much of Eng's spare time has been spent applying to various organizations on their behalf, with no success. And frankly, it's getting dire. She's discovered a way she could possibly help them apply for sponsorship to Canada, but it involves fundraising an amount to sustain the family for, at least, one year. This story is very personal for Eng: When she was an infant, she and her family were refugees from Laos. After some time in a camp in Thailand, the family was able to leave and come to Canada because a community organization in Canada sponsored them. As a result, Eng ended up growing up in Vancouver's Chinatown.
The direct appeal of the archivist in Kabul struck a chord with her, recalling the generosity her family received from strangers, which opened up a new life for her in Canada and led her to be in the very position to help someone else in need in the same way she and her family had been helped.
Here’s a link to the campaign.
We posted this earlier on social media; thank you to readers who have already made a donation to support an Afghan family seeking to start a new life.
Book Club: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing
For our next book club we’ll read Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing. Can’t wait! It will be Friday, November 4th, 7 PM EST / Saturday, November 5th, 7 AM Taiwan time. All subscribers are welcome. Please email us at broadandampleroad@gmail.com (or reply to this email) if you want to join.
Trips to rural parts of Taiwan, plus our Mandarin version is back
If you’re in Taiwan and want to be part of little trips we’re planning (OK, we haven’t started yet), let us know. We want to create avenues to explore rural areas that deserve more attention, such as Pingtung and Yunlin.
If you missed our recent guest essays, please check out this piece on elderly online messages by Sam Robbins and Mei-chun Lee, as well as Kevin Pham’s moving personal essay.
And our Mandarin version is back! Here’s a piece on the popularity of the death penalty in Taiwan; thanks for sharing with friends who read Mandarin.
And last a tweet that has given us great joy:
"Unmoored by memories." Such a beautiful, perfect phrase. You are both such wonderful writers. I just returned to Portland, OR from a four-month stay in Taipei. I, too, find the ongoing project of political liberation extraordinary and profound, with lessons for other countries that might not have as urgent a need to define themselves in terms that reinforce their sovereignty but that still face existential consequences if they don't embark on such a project. I'm thinking of America's need to recalibrate its understanding of itself so as to better achieve its aspiration of being a multiracial democracy. I opened a recent review of a new film about the White Terror with that idea in mind: https://nomanisanis.land/untold-herstory-review/
Thank you for your insights. Reading your work helps me stay feeling connected to Taiwan
Hi Michelle and Albert! My partner and I just recently moved to Taipei and would love to join in on some of your upcoming trips to explore the rural parts of Taiwan. Please let me know how we can be involve
Thanks!
Debby